


who can understand / the heart of woman or man?

by poalimal



Series: WIP Amnesty [3]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon Divergence, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Serious racism, Snippet, Steve has morally ambiguous superpowers, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-14 23:46:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15400257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poalimal/pseuds/poalimal
Summary: From the self-assigned prompt: 5 times Steve Rogers touched someone else's heart.





	1. Chapter 1

 

I. SARAH ROGERS  
_No one felt more loudly than his mommy._

Steve's daddy gets angry a lot. He hates the apartment. He fought in a war so he hates a lot of things. Mommy says he has a lot of bad days. Steve can always tell when Daddy has a bad day because when he comes up the stairs, Steve starts feeling real lousy for no reason at all. Steve's small for his age so on bad days, he can hide in the kitchen cabinet under the sink. And if he's real quiet, Daddy forgets about him. In the darkness, he draws on the cupboard with his fingers and makes bargains with God: _If I can hold my breath for 500 seconds, You'll make Daddy stop being so mean. If I can guess how many days it will be until we can buy potatoes, You'll make Mommy smile. If I can run up the stairs without stopping, You'll get us a real good cookbook._

Daddy says God is a conman. Mommy says God answers prayers. Every night, she kneels on the floor and prays for a really long time. What do you talk about? he asked once, sort of curious to see if she would tell him. That's private, she said, but Steve already knew. No one felt more loudly than his mommy. When she was proud of him, it felt like she was peppering his heart with kisses. And when she prayed, alone at night, Steve could hear her.

_Let me get out._

Every night, _Let me get out_ , until Steve had to stuff his fist into his mouth to stop from crying out loud. Steve thinks God must be pretty lonely and mean to listen to prayer after prayer like that and not do anything. If he was big like God's s'posed to be, he could tell Daddy to go away. He could reach the phone and call the police if they promised not to say anything. But he's too small to do anything. Mommy even said so once.

That was a really bad day. After Daddy left, she just curled up in the bathtub and cried and cried. At first Steve tried to draw but his hands shook too badly to hold the pencil. Then he stared out the window for a long time to see if Bucky was back home from school yet, even though he knew he couldn't be, because sometimes he was a coward and he didn't like seeing his Mommy hurt. But finally the hurt grew too big.

So he got out of bed and waited until he could catch his breath. The apartment always seemed too big to walk when he got sick. He knew that was just a trick his mind played on him: the apartment was small, it was really him. He just couldn't do anything right. So it took him a real long time to get to the bathroom.

He kept having to stop because it was colder outside of bed and his chest hurt something awful. And when he finally reached the bathroom door he just leaned against it for a long while, so Mommy wouldn't get worried when she saw him out of bed.

And then he made a bargain he'd always been too scared to make before: _If I can make Mommy smile, You'll make Daddy disappear._ He opened the door before he could turn chicken and try to take it back. She turned her face to him, blotchy and purple, her sadness suddenly smaller because of _him_ and he felt guilty and shy, all at the same time. He stood in the doorway looking at the bathroom tile--green speckle--because he couldn't say it while looking at her face.

'Mommy, you can go, okay? Don't worry anymore. I'm getting a lot better. So you can go.' And then he sort of reached out clumsily and patted at her heart.

 _Don't part on bad terms_ , she always said, so he wanted her to be as happy as possible.

'My Stevie,' she said and when he looked up, she smiled so hard the happiness hurt him a bit, when it came. 'How can I leave my little boy?' 

 


	2. Chapter 2

II. JIM MORITA  
 _'Gee, Cap,' Jim says softly. 'What do you mean?'_

Jim is different when he's alone. Well, everyone is. The observer effect, Dr. Erskine used to say, whenever the higher-ups would send Steve blank speculative smiles. How do you think they act when you are not around?

With the rest of the men not around, Jim is quiet. His posture is different, more bowed and tense. And his heart feels strange. Steve knows enough by now that it's a lost cause trying to figure out the hearts of soldiers during wartime, but Jim is different.

Even if they have what passes for a good day in Bretagne, Jim's happiness is...thin.

Bucky laughed when Steve asked if Jim was feeling okay and said, 'Aw, Jimmy just misses his geisha girl back home.'

Later, Gabe -- _Gabe_ , whose heart was a mess and a half -- took him aside and said, 'Leave it alone, Cap.'

But ever since then he's been keeping an eye out, just hanging around Jim, making terrible jokes so he'll laugh, that sort of thing. He's been careful about it; he doesn't want anyone to start thinking anything's wrong. But the last time he was around someone who felt this bad for this long, she threw herself off a building. Jim's a good man and, well, he shouldn't feel so poorly. 

Right now he's re-rolling an old cigarette through his fingers, just staring at it. Nothing terribly strange. He goes off by himself a lot, specially early in the mornings. Steve wonders if--

'Captain Rogers,' Jim says, without looking up. 'Did you have something you wanted to talk to me about?' A sudden sensation of bitterness flares up so intensely it near drags Steve to his knees. Dr. Erskine wasn't lying when he said the serum amplified everything. And the heat just makes everything worse. Sometimes he feels anxious and terrified and he knows it's not him, it's the woman three or four towns over, getting pieces of her leg peeled off.

It gets distracting. 

Steve does his counting exercises in his head and comes forward to stand next to Jim. He tries to smile. Does Jim feel this lousy all the time? Sheesh.

'Not particularly,' he replies. 'Did--you have something you wanted to talk about?'

Jim flicks a glance at him and smiles. It's a good smile, but it's not real.

'Where'm I from, Cap?'

...Is this a trick question? 

Steve pushes his hair back and his hand comes back wet. Darn heat. 'Fresno?' he says. 'Did you--hit your head?'

Jim doesn't say anything at first, just keeps rolling his cigarette. 'Fresno,' he says flatly. 'You sure?'

Oh. The first thing Colonel Phillips said when he saw Jim was, The only good Japanese is a dead Japanese. Steve almost laid him out flat. Jim laughed and said, You don't win wars by being nice.

Was Bucky teasing him again? Steve was going to have a talk with him. 

'You're from Fresno. You don't like the cold. You're fluent in Spanish. Your dad has a good singing voice.'

Jim looks up at him, startled. 'My dad has the best singing voice you ever heard,' he says slowly. He looks back down, quirks his lips. 'He'd like you, Cap.'

Steve hasn't felt intensely homesick like this since his first night sleeping in the barracks. He'd been naive enough to think everything would be fine. After all, God finally let Ma go. Nothing to miss back home, he'd thought, back when he had no idea where Bucky was. He'd still spent the first week throwing up, miserably sick for mothers and fathers and sweethearts he'd never met. 

The echo now isn't as strong but it's too difficult to ignore. First there's his longing for home: He wishes for regular showers, a good burger with Peg, and a full night's rest. And then there's Jim's homesickness. Jim's homesickness is soft and jagged, like a thorn stuck in his lip.

'Look, Jim, is there something on your mind?'

'Gee, Cap,' says Jim softly. 'What do you mean?'

Steve shoulders through his discomfort. 'Jim, I want you to know you can talk to me if you're feeling unhappy.'

Jim gives him a look. 'There's a war on. Am I s'pposed to be glad?'

'No, I meant,' Steve stops, frustrated. Peg keeps telling him he needs to improve his bedside manner. Bucky's much better than him at this sort of thing. He pushes all of his goodwill at Jim's heart. 'If you felt like--giving up. Don't. I know it's terrible. And it gets to you sometimes. But--'

Jim throws his head back and laughs. Steve stops. Jim's relief feels like an icy wind. At least the throbbing stops a little.

'Is this you talkin' me off the ledge, Cap?' he says. He laughs again. 'Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. You should really be talkin' to Dum Dum; he's been crying out for his sweetheart in his sleep.'

Steve already knew that. He feels sort of sick. 'Oh.'

Jim slaps him on the back and grins. 'Is that why you've been staring at me for the past three weeks? I was beginning to think you were sweet on me.' 

Steve bows his head, blinking away the sweat. He thinks of all the blankly speculative smiles Jim must've seen straight through. No wonder Gabe told him to leave it alone.

'Well,' he says, and dredges up a grin, a real grin this time. Jim deserves at least that much. 'You are a handsome man.'

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it was unclear: Steve is fixating on Jim's emotions, not because he can understand the conflict of fighting for a country ready to round you and your people up and steal all your possessions - but because he is wondering if Jim can be trusted.


	3. Chapter 3

III. LOKI  
_'Human,' he hisses, 'you presume much.'_

'How brave you humans are when your prey is wounded,' Loki sneers. Strange has done something queer--something bad to Loki's magic. He keeps regenerating blood even though he can't heal himself.

'He's lookin' kind of blue there,' Steve says. Loki snarls at him when he tries to get closer.

'Loki,' Thor hushes, patting his back, leaving his own completely open. Steve moves to the right, coming between the collapsed stairs and Thor. There could be a robot or two somewhere beneath all that rubble and Thor wouldn't have even noticed.

Steve doesn't particularly like how vulnerable Thor lets himself become around Loki. It's nothing new: Thor always leaves himself open around family. It's a liability Steve can understand.

He looks at the ceiling, about 20 feet up. If the stairs collapsed without warning, then the structural integrity of the rest of the building might be threatened.  
Without Thor to bust them out, it looks like Steve's in charge of digging them an escape route.

'All defences are down,' Natasha says over the comms. 'We need to get out of here before the backup program kicks in.'

'Strange kept a security backup program for his security backup program?' Tony whistles. He sounds exhausted and vaguely impressed. 'Unbelievable. He must really not want us to read his diary. I'm in the south wing, trying to--whoa, whoa, that's not a toy!'

'Thor and I are in the ballroom on the northeast side,' says Steve. 'The stairs have collapsed, I'm digging us out.'

'Fools. You will not leave this place alive,' says Loki. He says it over the comms, too, though, so there's a weird echo.

'Was--was that Loki?' asks Clint. 'Cap--I thought you were taking care of that.'

'That was the original plan, yeah,' Steve says.

' _I_ will take care of my brother,' says Thor.

'You are not my brother,' Loki replies, by rote.

'...Right, well, I'll be in the plane with Rhodes, if anyone feels like finishing this mission alive,' says Natasha. She's never been very interested in Thor's Family Circus.

'Guys? A little help? Hulk's moving onto the next castle.' This from Tony.

'We're headed your way,' says Natasha. Steve feels grateful and frustrated. He should be out there, not trapped in a room with Loki, of all people.

'For the record, I knew this would happen,' says Clint. '"Of course Bruce won't notice if I eat the last of his ice cream"--'

'It was Rhodey's idea!' Tony protests.

'Ahem,' says Jim, primly.

'Oh, hey, Rhodey, ha ha, forgot you could hear--'

Steve puts his comm on emergency standby and continues shovelling. He should have used that hand lotion Natasha gave him; his palms are cracked and bleeding.

'Brother,' says Thor. 'Whatever Strange has done to your life force, it keeps. Let me read to you your last rites. No brother of mine will die in flux.'

'I would die in flux before I name you kin,' says Loki, wheezing heavily.

Steve pauses his shovelling to look back. Loki looks like he's shrivelling up. He's shaken off worse stuff than this. For whatever reason, though, this time, it looks bad. Thor looks so miserably desperate that Steve gently pushes a little goodwill towards Loki's heart, just a pinch, not even enough to notice--

Loki wrenches his wrist out of Thor's grasp and sits up, blood spattering everywhere, eyes wide and red and fixed on Steve.

'Human,' he hisses, 'you presume much.'

Steve rears back, heart pounding wildly, unable to move his lips. He can't speak. Is this Loki or Strange? Thor glances back at him coldly, as if he's not trying his best to get them out of there as fast as he can.

'You should leave, Steven Rogers. You cannot possibly be witness to these proceedings.'

Steve gestures pointedly at the rubble blocking their only means of escape.

'What proceedings?' Loki says. He shakes the blood off like a great wounded dog. 'I did not consent.'

'Loki, you will die!' Thor yells. 'And without honour. I wish to at least speak of you in Valhalla, even if I cannot see you.'

'Your honour is as women's bones to me,' says Loki, which Steve thinks is pretty outrageous, coming from a guy who has less honour than the dirt beneath Peg's toenai--he doesn't want to think about it anymore. 'To my dying breath I deny you any right you may have to my memory, Odinson. He turns to Steve and struggles to his feet. As for you, mortal. Since you are so eager to know my heart--'

He spits blood into Steve's eyes. Steve turns to the side and--

it is so dark.

How many more stairs until the top? They just keep going on and on and on, around and around up to the bright light. It is too hot to breathe. Steve takes off all of his clothes and it still feels like he's being baked alive. The stairs are stone, cool and wet. They hurt his feet.

I tire, he says.

Keep going, says a voice.

I must sleep, he says, an age later. He collapses against the wall. It turns to ice beneath his hands.

Nithing, says the voice. Why can you not be more like your brother?

Steve looks up and up and up and sees his brother. Precious, perfect Thor, immune to criticism and common sense. Steve nearly chokes on the amount of love he feels for him.

Keep going and you may yet reach him, says the voice.

When? asks Steve, feeling small and weak. He looks down at his hands and legs and he is himself again, short and painfully skinny again, again the foolish little child too scared to save his mom, again the man too stupid and blind to trust his comrade.

In time, says the voice. Keep going and you will see what you can become.

Further up, up into the heat that he cannot reach, people are laughing, louder and louder. He sees himself as he was after he took the serum, strong and brave. Laughing and smiling as he strangles Peg and Gabe and Jim and his mother and Bucky and Dr. Erskine, flings their crushed bodies to the side.

No! he says. He tries to run but he can barely move his legs. He falls to his knees, crawling, though the stone stairs tear through his skin. He drags himself through his blood and weeps.

You will never be any better than this, says the voice, gently, as if he is being done a kindness. You will never be anything more -- than a monster.

Steve wakes up.

 


End file.
